Such chambers or cores are designed to be fitted to the wheels of vehicles that are as varied as forklift trucks, earth moving vehicles, baggage-handling tractors, . . . , etc., i.e. vehicles that travel under difficult conditions and must continue to be capable of moving even in the event of the carcase of their tires being punctured, while nevertheless having the running characteristics, and in particular the flexibility, associated with conventional pneumatic tires, with or without inner tubes.
Numerous embodiments of such unpuncturable pressure chambers for tires are already known, and they are described, for example, in British patent number 2 092 531 which describes very accurately the ratio of the area of the cells in such chambers to the cross-section of the chamber.
In addition to the limitations mentioned above, the embodiment of the British patent relates to one type of elastomer only and to very specific dimensions for the length of the chamber relative to the tire in which it is fitted.
The problem therefore arises of providing an unpuncturable pressure chamber for a tire of the type constituted by a toroidal cushion of elastomer material including mutually independent gastight cells containing a gas under pressure, while avoiding the limitations of prior devices and while also being simpler to manufacture than a device constituting an assembly of component parts.
In this respect, an object of the invention is to provide unpuncturable pressure chambers of the type under consideration that can be manufactured using only those materials that are commonplace in the rubber industry and by implementing operations that are likewise well known, so that the chambers can be mass produced at low cost.